Light on a Burial Shroud
by Ice Cube1
Summary: They say your life flashes before your eyes before you die. Barbie was about to find out just how true that was… Jumps off from the end of the season one finale. Definite Jarbie and written before the finale aired - so somewhat ignores the ultimatum Big Jim gave Julia...and hoping to write a companion piece with Julia's decision process soon...
1. Cut Ties with All the Lies

**Title: Light on a Burial Shroud**

**Author: Ice Cube**

**Rating: T for language, some violence**

**Spoilers: Yes. Just, yes. Everything from the first season is fair game.**

**Disclaimer: Right, if I owned them anywhere outside of my dreams, the characters that are forthwith mentioned in this story would be making me a lot of money and very happy…so no, they aren't mine, and I'm still trying to get out from under student loans, so if you're going to sue, feel free, you won't get anything. **

**Characters: Barbie, Julia, others make brief appearances**

**Archives: Feel free; just let me know where so I can find it again.**

**Summary: They say your life flashes before your eyes before you die. Barbie was about to find out just how true that was…Probably AU after Monday's finale airs.**

**Warnings: To those who think that I am capable of writing a fic that is torture free…I can't, and thus, if you don't want to see h/c, various possible emotional and/or physical tortures, and other forms of angst, find another story. **

**I don't always have my stories beta'd, I'm too impatient to wait for someone to proof it after I've written it, so I apologize for any mistakes, and if you email me to tell me that they're there, I'll fix them later. **

**Reviews are always a plus; it's great to know that people are reading my stories and that they evoke some strong reactions. Constructive criticism will be taken under advisement. Flames, however, will be treated with the utmost respect they deserve…they will be used as fodder for jokes for years to come.**

**That said, on with the tale…**

* * *

**Chapter 1 – Cut Ties with All the Lies**

He'd known this day was coming. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he'd always seen himself going out like this. Maybe not at the end of a noose in front of a riled up mob, that was true. Probably not at the hands of a corrupt councilman with an eye for a throne. Assuredly not while trapped under some godforsaken _dome_ intent on imprisoning all of them indeterminately. And definitely not for things that he hadn't actually done – he wholeheartedly believed he had enough skeletons in his closet that the false accusations were unnecessary to bring him to this moment. But standing accused of murder and sentenced to death as opposed to going out a hero? That he'd expected. Hell, some days he longed for it just to get it over with. Since the day his unit had made the biggest mistake of their lives, Barbie had been waiting for it all to catch up with him. He was tired of trying to outrun the guilt and the shame.

Running from himself was exhausting.

Call it karma, call it irony, call it some god's master plan, he didn't really pause too much to think about putting a name to it. He'd been living on borrowed time since he first started with the lies.

_{We came across the bodies like that, sir.}  
{We heard the pop pop pop of the small arms fire and by the time we got there it was too late, ma'am.}_

_{I was just passing through.}  
{I was __just__ a grunt.}_

_{I'm not your story.}  
{I can't wait to meet Peter.}  
{Peter must have taken off. You know, that happens sometimes. Some guys, they get in so deep, and you know, they skip town.}_

The more Barbie struggled with the truth of who he was now, the truth of what he'd done in the name of King and Country so to speak, the truth of who he became under Max's watchful eye, the more he realized that he didn't know how to live with himself. Getting caught in the dome was just another way for him to begin to atone for what he'd done.

Barbie hadn't wanted to realize how lucky he was that the cows had forced him off the road that day. A few more minutes and he'd have been home free to keep wandering down whatever path Max had started him on – with or without her continued help. But if it'd been only a few more seconds? He'd have been deader than that cow that got sliced when the dome came down. Neither option was a choice he'd prefer.

He wasn't suicidal, and he didn't really feel some need to spend the rest of his life sitting in a jail cell rotting away – despite how tired he was of it all. Too many years of SERE training had given him a healthy dose of the need to stay free. No, Barbie had no desire to air his dirty laundry out for anyone to see – least of all a small town sheriff in the same town he'd killed "Smith" in. It was why he'd made sure his pistol was accessible and eyed the cruiser until it was out of sight right before he'd crashed into the McAlister's field.

Barbie wasn't looking for a way to fall on his sword. He'd just come to terms with the fact that he wasn't worth the ground he walked on anymore. That the fresh-faced kid who'd been able to look at himself in the mirror with pride, a sharply pressed uniform and shiny medals was a distant memory. When it all finally did catch up with him? Well, then he'd just let the cards fall as they may.

And then, he'd met Julia.

She was different. It was never easy. Being close to her and knowing every second that he was stumbling over the ghost of the last man that he'd killed tore at him in ways he didn't expect. He wanted to run as far as the dome would let him and continue to simply survive. But she made him want to be a better man again. She made him _want_ to see the light at the end of this tunnel. Julia Shumway breathed a life back into him that he hadn't even known was missing. And that was just within the first few hours after meeting her.

Before she'd taken him into her home.  
Before she'd forgiven him for thinking he'd run Peter off as a bookie's enforcer.  
Before she'd allowed him into her bed, and then – for reasons that were still beyond his grasp – wanted him to stay there.

All _that_ was a lifetime before she'd figured out the truth about everything and still gave him "maybe" on a future.

He didn't understand any of it. How could he? Barbie hated _himself_ for everything he'd done. Why didn't _she _hate him, too? He'd told her secrets that he should have taken to his grave, secrets that should have sent her running in disgust and hate.

But she'd stayed.

She'd anchored him in such a way that he started to follow her beacon of hope. He'd started to tread water again in the hope that he could keep _her_ afloat in this new Hell under the dome. Julia had given him a purpose.

Julia had saved him. From himself, anyway.

Saving him from Big Jim and the lynch mob in front of him might just be beyond her reach.

**...Under the Dome...**

It was all too much. So much had happened in the last 72 hours and she hadn't had a moment to process it all. So much had happened in the last _two weeks_, but she prided herself on rolling with the punches.

The dome came down. No one seemed to know a damned thing about it.  
The military tried to wipe her whole town off the map.  
There was a power source – or something – that produced ghosts with cryptic messages.

But those things she could handle. It was her own life that was throwing her for a loop at the moment.

Caution had never been Julia's strong suit, and God knew that _that _wasn't likely to change anytime soon. She went after the story and risked getting burned to find out the truth. Even when it hurt. Especially when it hurt.

Peter might be having an affair or he might have skipped town from a gambling debt that left her penniless. Neither of those options had seemed right. Julia knew her husband. She was sure of it. Somewhere in this mess, a story began to unfold. And if there was one thing that centered the journalist, it was her need to eke out the hidden facts and sculpt them into a story – an exposé. So she'd dug. And investigated. Her own husband.

And there was Barbie. If he didn't scream story, then she wasn't a journalist. The mysterious stranger with the military in his past who just happened to be in a little Podunk town like theirs on the day that the world as they knew it ended? A first-year student could tell that he was hiding the mother of all secrets. He was the center of her story. She knew that from the beginning, despite – or maybe because of – his assertion otherwise.

The way he avoided certain people in town and dodged all her questions on his past.  
The haunted look in Barbie's eyes every time he caught sight of her ring or the pictures of Peter scattered throughout her house.  
The way he'd tortured himself about falling for her.

She'd recognized the guilt rolling off of him in waves – had even appreciated the fact that he understood that while her relationship with Peter was clearly over, she was still married.

But she never expected _what_ he was at the center of.

Then Peter had reached out from the grave and dropped a bombshell on her.

_{Hey there, Red. I'll tell you soon.}_

The life insurance policy.  
The missing gun.  
All the bullets.

All of the lies.

It had surprised her to realize that figuring out the story didn't change her opinion of Barbie, even as her opinion of Peter was hurtling down the drain. It hurt that he'd lied to her; that was true. It made her backtrack when she realized that the two men in her life had spent the majority of their time lying to her. But she was pragmatic enough to understand that they'd both been trying to protect her in their own broken ways.

And really, how did you go about telling someone that you'd killed their husband, anyway?

But he'd been ready to do it. Barbie couldn't have known that she'd found the truth, but had come to her, hat in hand with a busted up face, ready to break the news to her. He'd been so damned surprised that she knew, and so damned shattered about what he'd done that Julia had felt her heart breaking – for him.

She and Barbie had been through too much in the past few days for her to see him as the bad guy here.

She had learned enough about people to recognize that snap judgments only got you both screwed. She had learned the hard way to sit back and let the whole story develop before putting your name on the byline.

Barbie's story wasn't nearly complete.

And their story together? It was just barely starting.

Julia wasn't quite ready to forgive him for everything – she still had to take the time to process, to grieve. So she'd spent the night tossing and turning in a bed that had never felt so large until she'd realized that she wasn't the only one hurting here. She wasn't the only one trapped by Peter's ghost.

It hadn't been until she'd seen the look on Barbie's face when he'd offered to leave that morning that she'd understood how self-sacrificing he really could be. Despite telling her that he wasn't a hero, she could see past his mistakes to the character he'd hidden beneath his guilt. He was military to the core – it was ingrained so deeply to save others that Julia was sure he didn't even realize he was making decisions to put himself in the line of fire. But it was one thing to dive at a guy with a gun and hope you didn't get shot in the process of disarming him. It was the same thing to put yourself in the middle of a riot trying to keep the peace or go running off after two missing kids when the whole town might – quite literally – get blown to pieces. Risking his _life_ was one thing.

It was another thing entirely to risk his _heart_ the way he constantly did with her.

He could have let her think he was a hero. He told her about his unit's mistake.  
He could have run with "in the future". He asked if she was sure.  
He could have tried to wheedle his way back into her good graces. He asked if he should leave.

Barbie would sacrifice everything for her. Peter already had.

What made her worth all that?

It had startled her that morning when she realized that she already knew what they needed to do. Together. Because that was the only way it could work.

That was the only way Julia _wanted _it to work.

Visiting Peter's grave would allow her to finish her husband's story. Barbie's _was_ just beginning, and they would finish it together. Hopefully, that would only happen sometime far into the future and in a world where an afternoon drive to Westlake or even a weekend journey to Acadia was a possibility. First, though, they had to get past the hurdle of her husband's poor choices. Julia wanted to take away just a little of Barbie's pain along with her own and allow him to close the book on Peter for both of them.

But some woman with a cryptic quip had thrown a wrench in Julia's plans.

Waking up in a storage closet when the last thing she remembered was falling to the floor of her home was just a little disorienting.

And damn if getting shot didn't _hurt_.

**...Under the Dome...**

"Today, Chester's Mill sentences Dale Barbara to death."

Barbie was sure Jim had been going on and on about how evil he was before that declaration. He would be lying if he said he'd been listening to yet another one of 'Big Jim's campaign speeches'. Because he knew that's all they were. The man was so wrapped up in his own little power trip that he'd forgotten his humanity somewhere down the line, and Barbie had never fallen for it. But hearing his own death sentence being proclaimed while the townsfolk glared and grinned cut through his racing thoughts on how to get out of this.

Barbie hadn't realized that despite the calm demeanor he was trying to portray, he was trembling.

When he'd shipped out on his first tour in Iraq, he hadn't really expected to come home. He didn't really have much to come home for, anyway. IED's and hails of bullets haunted his dreams and he half expected at any moment that he'd be cut down and that would be that. But as the days turned into weeks turned into months, he'd settled in and made a name for himself. He'd stopped waking up in a cold sweat worried about what could happen to him and started focusing on how to get himself and his unit back in one piece.

He'd been very good at his job.

The bullet that had nearly taken his life behind enemy lines had surprised him, but hadn't frightened him out of the action. He kept the deformed dog tag close to the heart it had protected, put the medal in a box to collect dust, and fought with a renewed vigor to keep himself in a position to make things happen.

He'd been good at that, too.

Promotions had come and special missions had paved the way for him and the 13th. Thoughts of dying horrible, painful deaths had gone by the wayside as he'd found a family with the Jackrabbits. Then all hell had broken loose, he'd been given another medal – this time for his "honorable" deeds saving _her_, and they'd called him a hero.

_That_ had been enough to break him.

He'd turned his back on the danger of life in Iraq. Gone home and tried to stitch his humanity back together.

Line cooks and construction workers didn't worry about how they were going to meet their end.

Gambling enforcers were more likely to shatter their own souls or someone else's kneecap than to have their life flash before their eyes.

Barbie hadn't thought about what it would feel like to die in a long time.

It was hard not to react when Big Jim had sentenced him.  
It was hard not to stare out into the crowd and hope to see just one sympathetic face.  
It was hard not to fight and end up putting himself in a more compromised position.

He couldn't do any of that. Not if he wanted to make it out of here alive.

It surprised him to realize just how much he wanted to make it out of this.

The trick to surviving an impossible situation was to understand that you were already dead. Some CO or other had told him that once. Being afraid of dying did no one any good. If you let the fear take hold of you, then you were useless to yourself and everyone else.

Barbie couldn't be useless for Julia right now. Not now, not ever.

She still wasn't safe.

But it was hard not to stare at the noose out of the corner of his left eye and wonder what it would feel like wrapped around his neck. Would it be quick – break his neck and end it before he'd even registered he'd swung? Or would the rope tighten ever so slowly, inch by inch, cutting off his air supply and the blood to his brain? Would he feel the burning of the twine on his skin as the rope twisted and cinched across sensitive flesh? Or would the snap of falling to a quick stop supersede everything else?

Barbie had seen a man hanged before. In some no-name town on a classified mission where his unit was waiting to take out a warlord with delusions of grandeur, the bastard had been exacting his own brand of justice on prisoners he'd taken from a neighboring village. The 13th were still waiting for a green light and could do nothing.

So they'd watched helplessly as some poor sod had been led to the gallows like a lamb to slaughter. He'd been beaten and defeated already, and didn't even protest the rope being tightened.

The man hadn't made a sound before he dropped off a rickety chair and twitched and spasmed for what seemed like an eternity before finally, _finally, _he stilled.

It wasn't a sight Barbie wanted to remember. Especially now.

With his hands already numb from the handcuffs that had been left on for far too long, Barbie felt more exposed and vulnerable than he'd ever been in his life. He'd learned to fight and fight back at an early age, and helplessness didn't sit well with him. It was enough to send a shudder through him that he quickly quashed under a glare and a huff. He wouldn't give the Rennies the satisfaction of seeing him squirm.

The rope was still wafting in the breeze in front of him, but Barbie could already feel the coarse strings laying at the base of his throat. He could already imagine the terror that would accompany being helpless to even pull at the noose. It seemed that his legs were already trying to twitch as the oxygen supply dwindled in his very cells.

He had to remind himself to just breathe.

Barbie couldn't _begin_ to explain how much he didn't want to experience being hanged.

But when was the last time that what he wanted mattered, anyway?

The rope slipped over his ears and landed on his shoulders.

**...Under the Dome...**

Julia was almost certain that if Barbie didn't survive this, she was going to kill both of the Rennies. Then again, if he did survive this, she might just kill _Barbie_.

She understood that he had some pressing need to atone for what he'd done.  
She understood that he'd give up everything not to cause her any more pain than he thought he already had.  
She understood that he'd seen so much death that he wouldn't be able to handle hers.

But damnit, she also understood that she wouldn't be able to handle _him_ dying.

Not for her. Not for anything.

Julia had never thought of herself as something fragile that needed to be protected. But apparently both the men that had fallen for her put her up on some kind of pedestal and stopped at nothing to keep her safe, throwing themselves on the mercy of fate and hoping she'd come out on top. It was endearing, it was admirable and it was heroic.

It was maddening and frustrating and…and terrifying.

The fear that was clutching at her chest with everything that had happened since she'd found that insurance policy was almost paralyzing.

Julia was pretty sure the fear was justified.

She'd found out her husband had committed suicide via the man who she felt such a strong connection to, it was beyond reason.  
She'd been shot and had woken up in hiding so that Big Jim wouldn't try and kill her.  
She'd learned that Barbie had purposely allowed himself to be caught and held on murder charges so she and Angie could escape.  
She'd seen Junior choose where his loyalties lie – for the moment, anyway – and force Barbie to put himself right back in Big Jim's cross-hairs.

She was...well, she was connected to the egg – that was all she'd let her subconscious run with right now.

_{The only thing we have to fear…is fear itself.}_ FDR's famous quote wormed its way through her subconscious and almost made her laugh out loud. Clearly, the former president had never been to Chester's Mill. Here, under the dome, there was plenty to fear and most of it stemmed from the whims of one Big Jim Rennie.

And Big Jim had Barbie.

That was the first of Julia's priorities. Everything supernatural that had tried to put her off her game would just have to wait. Protecting the egg, finding a way out of all this, figuring out where she and Barbie were headed – those were all secondary.

None of those things mattered if Julia couldn't figure out how to get to the Town Hall in time to save the…

To save the man she loved.

**...TBC**


	2. Face Down the Demons

**Chapter 2 – Face Down the Demons**

Barbie wanted to pretend that he was the big tough guy the town saw him as. He wanted to be stoic and face his end without betraying any of the emotions that were flooding through him. But as the rope tightened around his throat and constricted his air supply, he couldn't help throwing a heated glare over his shoulder. He only hoped it looked like defiance to Big Jim's smug smile. He hoped it didn't look like fear.

Barbie was frightened.

Not necessarily that he was just a few minutes away from dying. He'd been a few minutes away from death most of his adult life.

He was terrified _knowing_ that Big Jim would go back on his word and line up Julia and the kids as his next pawns to sacrifice.

He was petrified that Julia was on her way to save him and wouldn't make it in time. He didn't want her to see him go out like this. Not like this.

Not strung up like some mangy dog.

He wanted her to remember him as better than that, at least.

Barbie had long prided himself on the ability not to care what anyone thought about him. He wouldn't bow down to anyone and he wouldn't toe the party line. Not even to save his own skin. It was what got him standing on his very own gallows about to drop to his death when he could have easily hidden his contempt of Big Jim's methods and character.

But he had sworn from now on that he was going to be true to himself to save what was left of his soul, no matter what anyone else thought. He simply didn't care.

Barbie cared more than anything else how _Julia_ saw him. He needed to be strong for her.

He needed to be a better man – for her. She deserved that at the very least.

And that was why he needed to get out of this. Because he wasn't done yet. He didn't want to save everyone like Joe had thought he was going to. He wasn't a protector or a savior or anything else those kids came up with.

Hell, he didn't even really want to save himself. He just wanted to save her.

He wanted to go back to Julia's home and beg her forgiveness and start down a new road to a new future.

He wanted something to build towards – he'd told Big Jim as much right before he'd walked into the tyrant's open arms and unwittingly offered himself as a scapegoat.

And now, as the hangman's knot lay against his skull and the crowd murmured in anticipation, he was about to pay for his and Jim Rennie's sins.

He closed his eyes tightly against the light right before he heard the creak of the trap door's lever.

It sounded like this was the end.

**...Under the Dome...**

Logic had always served Julia well, and she had always relied on it to make sense of jumbles of information. It didn't matter what the information was, what it led to. She could always trust her judgment to guide her in the correct choices. Not trusting logic had led to her disgrace in Chicago.

But there was nothing logical about how quickly she'd started to trust Barbie.

_{Linda said you saved a kid's life today. I'm not about to let you sleep out here like an animal.}  
{I let you stay in my house. I trusted you.}  
{I don't blame you for my husband's bad decisions.}_

And somehow, despite every bit of reasoning that told her to run screaming in the other direction, things started to change between them. Slowly, but surely, trust that should have been broken was knitting together into something even stronger. Something that she realized she never really had with Peter. Something unconditional.

Logic couldn't hold a candle to whatever this was.

_{We're going to be okay.}  
{No. I'd like you to stay.}  
{I've seen you sacrifice yourself for total strangers. But in the future, there can be no more lies.}  
{For us to move forward, I need closure. I think you do, too.}_

Julia had no idea what she was supposed to do with everything that had just been dropped on her. Having the egg in her hands had frightened her and centered her all at the same time.

But it would all have to wait.

The woman who would stop at nothing to get the answers suddenly didn't care to figure out what it all meant. It was taking too much time to get the egg safe and then get to Barbie's side.

Sometime in the last few days she'd realized that in this new world, in this new Hell, she didn't want to go it alone. Julia wasn't sure that Barbie understood that she _still_ didn't blame him for Peter's bad decisions. Even the decisions that put Barbie's finger on a trigger and her husband's blood on Barbie's hands. No matter what the dome had planned for them – for her – she had to get to him.

But she couldn't damn all of Chester's Mill, even if it meant she'd get to Barbie in time.

It didn't look like she was going to make it in time.

**...Under the Dome...**

At first, the shock of dropping through the floor had paralyzed him. He'd been so surprised that the fall hadn't broken his neck that it was all too surreal to comprehend. He was dying and there was very little that he could do about it. Then, everything had hurt with such alarming clarity that Barbie actually felt more alive than he had in several years. It was staggering how much he had let his life slip away from him without realizing. Now, with only moments left to him, he was faced with such a will to live that he fought harder for a single breath than he had for anything in his entire life. All he wanted was the strength to get through this.

And his body was beginning to fail him.

Tears trickled down his cheeks as he struggled to free his hands, to twist his neck and open his windpipe, to simply draw in another breath. The sheer terror he felt condemned him and the inability to do something as basic as breathe sapped his will and strangled him far more than the rope around his neck.

They say your life flashes before your eyes. But Barbie couldn't see anything. He could hear, though. He could hear every lie he'd ever told Julia stabbing him in the eardrums as they castigated him.

_{No connection to anyone in town? Nope.}  
{I have no idea what you're talking about.}_

But the lies were drowned out quickly with the realization that little by little, he'd voluntarily started telling her the truth.

_{Then I linked up with a bookie out of Westlake. Making sure the people paid what they owed.}  
{I'm sorry.}  
{The insurgents captured that soldier. But they didn't kill her company. We did.}  
{I'm so sorry. For everything.}  
{I love you.}_

In all the chaos between subverting Big Jim's plans to use him as a scapegoat and his first escape attempt that had brought him face to face with an awake - but clearly still weak - Julia, Barbie hadn't gotten the chance to make sure she had heard that last truth. It was probably the one thing he wanted to change if nothing else could be stopped. He desperately needed "I love you" to be the last thing he ever told her before he died.

Nothing else seemed to matter at that moment as he struggled to suck in oxygen through a slowly crushing windpipe. He wasn't sure Julia knew that he loved her. That, alone, was crushing _him._ It was almost enough to incapacitate him.

White pinpricks of light assaulted the darkness behind his tightly closed eyelids as he fought with everything he had for just another minute. If he only had another minute, maybe he could… Dimly, he wondered what another minute might buy him.

Suddenly, it felt as if the whole world was falling away from him and there was nothing he could do to break his fall.

And then it all went black.

**...Under the Dome...**

Julia was sure she'd never been so frightened in her entire life as when she watched the trap door fall out from under Barbie's feet. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as she pushed and shoved her way through the crowd to get to his side. She could see his feet kicking as he swung back and forth in some sick parody of a child's piñata.

As long as he was still fighting, then they were both okay. As long as he was still trying to get out of this, then they had a shot.

She wanted a real shot with him.

She wanted to take him home and make sense of all of this together.  
She wanted to be with him when this damned dome finally disappeared and they could rejoin civilized society – such as it was.  
She wanted to spend a Sunday afternoon listening to him rant about the Patriots' defense or cuddle up in October and hold her breath while the Red Sox fought against the Yankees in the ALCS.

She wanted to experience life at his side.

But to do that, she'd have to save him. And she didn't have much time left.

Someone was screaming and it was such a shrill sound that it hurt her ears.

It took her a minute to realize that it was her.

"What the hell are you all _doing_?" Julia finally got through to the gallows just as Barbie's movements became lethargic and only seconds before they stopped altogether. She wrapped her arms around his ankles, lifting with all her might and ignoring the popping of her stitches as she struggled to save him.

The pain of reopened wounds had nothing on the knife in her heart when she thought she might be too late.

She vaguely heard someone trying to reason with her, trying to make her understand. "He's a murderer. He's killed so many people. He tried to kill you."

Julia's voice was choked as she snarled back at them. She didn't really care what these people thought they knew. She only cared that they all woke up and _helped her_. "Barbie would _never_ hurt me. He didn't shoot… Somebody, _please_."

Then, Jim Rennie's greasy voice cut through the haze and tried to spin all this for her. She didn't want to hear any of it. "Julia, I know this is all a shock, but you have to trust me."

She almost laughed out loud. But it would take too much effort. Effort that she was focusing on keeping Barbie from leaving her.

She would never remember how the rope dangling Barbie from the gallows finally severed. All she knew was that she went from trying to take the pressure off Barbie's throat to crumpling to the ground with all of his weight on top of her.

Big Jim was still cajoling her. Junior's friends were encroaching on her space to try and take Barbie back into custody. As if he were a threat with the noose tight around his neck, his hands cuffed behind his back and a blue tinge to his lips that frightened Julia nearly to death.

Tears flowed down her cheeks as she cradled his head in her lap and tugged at the rope until it abraded her fingers and mingled their blood together. The writer in her would have thought it symbolic if she wasn't so busy fighting not to break down.

She had saved their town, but Barbie still needed her to save him. She wouldn't let him down.

The rope finally started to loosen and she could see the damage it had done to the skin on his throat. Her heart leapt into her own throat as she reached down to lay her bloody fingers over his pulse.

She felt the wildly erratic beats just seconds before she heard the sweetest sound in the world.

A single, harsh, grating breath passed through Barbie's lips.

She didn't want anything else to matter other than that. Barbie was somehow still alive and that meant she could let out the breath she'd been holding for him.

Then, someone grabbed her and tried to haul her away from under the gallows. She fought like a wildcat, but was still dragged agonizingly from Barbie's side. Her head hurt for him as she watched his skull flop bonelessly against the unforgiving ground. She was suddenly petrified that despite the fact he was alive, maybe he'd broken his neck.

"Julia!" Someone shook her. She thought it might be Phil. But it could have been Linda or Jim or Junior for all she really noticed. "You don't understand. He has to pay for his crimes. He's murdered several people. He killed Dodee. He killed your husband!"

_Had_ Barbie killed Peter?

He'd been the one to shoot him, certainly. He'd admitted to as much.  
He'd been the one to come and demand the bookie's money.  
But he swore to Julia that he was going to give Peter another day. She could see in his eyes that he had no desire to kill anyone.

_He_ hadn't brought an empty gun to the cabin knowing what it would mean.  
_He_ hadn't chosen to gamble their life savings away.  
_He _hadn't left her behind to deal with his problems alone.

Peter had done all that.

And Barbie?

He'd been a means to an end. If it wasn't Barbie, then it would have been someone else. Peter had wanted to die to save her, and if there was one thing she was still sure of about her husband, it was that when he set his mind to something, he could out-stubborn even her. Barbie hadn't been responsible for killing Peter any more or less than she had been. This was all on her husband's head.

"Peter committed suicide two weeks ago. The day the dome came down. No one killed my husband. The only thing Barbie is guilty of is laying Peter to rest." The words were soft and broken, but they were concrete. They dared _anyone_ to contradict her.

No one did.

Not even her own conscience.

The hands that had been restraining her melted away as her proclamation filtered through rage-fired mania to reassert calm over the masses. Like the rain had fizzled out the crazy riots that shook the town last week, Julia's confident admission was like a balm to the sharp edges Big Jim had filed everyone down to.

Maybe there was something to this monarch business, after all.

Julia's own nerves were still razor sharp as she dropped back to Barbie's side and carded her fingers through his hair. She startled when someone knelt down next to her and almost lashed out before realizing that it was Nurse Adams and not someone else trying to drag her away from him. Reality finally caught up with her and she started to shiver as her own reopened wounds fought for dominance with the fear of watching the young nurse evaluate Barbie. Tears dripped unchecked down Julia's face as she waited with bated breath for some kind of sign.

She didn't know or care what else was going on around her.

She barely noticed when Mrs. Grinnell draped something warm over her back.  
She vaguely heard Angie whisper in her ear that the egg was safe.  
She almost heard Big Jim somewhere in the background spinning a story to cover his political ass.

He could have been condemning her and it wouldn't have mattered. Not with the only one in Chester's Mill that she cared about at the moment lying far too still on the cold ground.

Barbie drew in another ragged breath and grimaced in pain. Instinct had Julia reaching for his hand to rub her thumb across his knuckles. He looked like he was fighting against the pain and struggling to wake up before calming at her soft touch. Something in Julia's chest finally settled and her trembling began to ease.

They were going to be okay, now.

**...Under the Dome...**

The dim light that filtered through his eyelashes confused him. The soft, but insistent, beeping off to his left steadied him, and had him reeling all at the same time. After everything that had happened, waking up was exactly the last thing he'd expected. He'd felt the end, felt the world fall away from him.

Hadn't he?

Barbie supposed that stranger things had happened in the last two weeks.

The last thing he really remembered was Big Jim's satisfied smirk and then everything else…well, he wasn't going to even try and recreate the rest of it. The beeping at his side increased in agreement.

It was then that he realized what the sound was. He was in the clinic.

The clinic wasn't safe. He and Angie had had to flee from the clinic with Julia to keep her from Big Jim.

Julia wasn't safe!

Where the hell was Julia?

Barbie jerked fully awake and came up swinging when he sensed someone nearby. It took almost all of his depleted energy reserves to keep the punch from connecting when he caught sight of red hair.

He collapsed back against the mattress and shuddered before shutting his eyes and wheezing out the quick gasp he didn't remember breathing in. Julia was right there with him. Everything would be okay now.

Barbie only had a few seconds to try and categorize what _didn't_ hurt before Julia had wrapped her arms around him and snuck her head onto his shoulder. It was pure instinct to lay one hand on the small of her back and tangle the fingers of the other hand in her hair. He could feel the tears soaking into his t-shirt and tried to shush her.

It turned into a hacking cough that almost made him wish he were dead. _God_, it felt like he'd swallowed a thousand sharp needles and then been punched in the neck. Repeatedly.

If that wasn't bad enough, the sheer force of the attack sent those needles straight up between his eyes and it felt like his head had exploded. It was nearly enough to send him back into the soothing darkness of unconsciousness.

"Barbie?" The catch of fear he heard in her voice rallied him enough to stave off falling back to sleep. He wouldn't let anything else hurt her. Not even him.

Not ever again.

"Don't leave." The choked words were punctuated with a sob as she tightened her fingers around the collar of his shirt.

"I'm right here." He whispered at just about a decibel over silent, but he knew she'd heard him all the same when she nodded against his shoulder. Barbie turned his head as slowly as he could manage in order not to set off anything _else_ in fireworks, and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead.

"Julia?" He pulled back and looked into her eyes. It was only now that he remembered that the last time they'd both been conscious at the same time, _{maybe}_ seemed like a pipe dream.

She pulled back, too, and he felt something shift as her eyes bore directly into his soul. It was like she was pulling all of his secrets out to examine before she sealed his fate. After all that had happened in the last few days, no verdict found by the town under Big Jim's lies mattered. The next thing Julia said or did would kill him or save him.

Sleep was tugging at him, but he needed to know.

Julia leaned forward and brushed a feather-light kiss over the base of his throat. It should have hurt, but felt better than any painkillers ever had. She smiled and her lips claimed his. Barbie could taste the salt of her tears. Then she lay her head back on his shoulder, whispering directly into his ear.

"I'm sure."

**...Under the Dome...**

The bed that had seemed so lonely just a few days ago now felt like heaven with her arm wrapped securely around Barbie's middle. With her ear to his chest, she was content to let the world-at-large – or at least as large as Chester's Mill – roll right on by as long as it meant they could stay wrapped up in each other. The soft sounds of his sleep soothed her in such a way that she was more at ease than she'd been in a long time.

Julia wasn't entirely sure how much later it was when she realized that Barbie's fingers were tracing random shapes up and down her back. She didn't know how long he'd been awake, satisfied to lay on his back with her tangled up around him.

"You know, saving your life cost me a million dollars." Julia smiled coyly as she lifted her head from where she'd been listening to Barbie's now steady heartbeat to look him in the eye. Even after everything, she needed to make sure he knew she had no regrets. A soft kiss was placed on the corner of his mouth and she caught the glint of humor in his eye. He understood.

He was finally healing.

_They_ were finally healing.

"I'm sure I can think of a few ways to pay you back for that." Barbie flipped the covers up over her head as she caressed the bruises on his face. Nurse Adams had mentioned the probability of a concussion when they'd finally left the clinic the day before, and it looked to Julia that he was still fighting its effects. Pain still marred his features, and what she had often called 'headache squint' pulled at still dazed eyes as the effects of those several beatings assaulted his brain. His voice was still wheezy and gravelly enough to shoot a dart of pain through her chest as she pictured – _again_ – how close she'd come to losing him. But his tone was playful and had a lightness to it that she'd never heard in him before. It seemed that the Dale Barbara she'd dreamed he must have been - before Iraq and Max and Peter had all conspired to break him - was fighting to make a resurgence. It was a rebellion of hope that she'd nurture through the darkness of whatever the dome attacked them with next.

But they'd face whatever that inevitably was.

Together.

…**FIN**

* * *

**So there you have it. Hopefully, the season finale will play enough into this that it continues to be believable, and maybe even enough that I can take the AU tag off of it. I thought about leaving it as TBC, and seeing where the finale led me, but it seems that this story has reached a natural conclusion, so it's complete as it stands. If anyone has any plot bunnies, however, feel free to send them my way. Until this one bit, they've been sorely lacking.  
**


End file.
